Westminster funeral home owner reaches her childhood goal

Felicia Malone-Williams poses for a portrait at Shannon & Malone Chapel of Peace Funeral Home on Feb. 20 in Westminster. (Anya Semenoff, YourHub)

Felicia Malone-Williams knew she would be in the death care business when she was 9.

"I started having dreams about burying people," Malone-Williams said. "So, my family went to talk to the pastor of my church in my hometown in Illinois."

The pastor told her mother and father that she was dreaming about the catacombs, ancient burial tombs made of stones. He said Malone-Williams was having visions about her life's calling.

That stuck with her. Today, Malone-Williams lives in Westminster and is the first African-American woman in the state to open her own funeral home while holding a degree in mortuary sciences as a licensed embalmer.

A person needs to have only a high school diploma and two years of apprenticeship to be a funeral director in Colorado, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. The state does not license funeral directors or embalmers.

"You have people who can open up funeral homes who aren't licensed morticians," Malone-Williams said. "They contract embalmers like me to come and do that part of their business for them."

It's ironic because Malone-Williams learned her trade outside of school for more than 15 years before she got her formal degree from the St. Louis Community College at Forest Park in Missouri in 2001.

"I was working the night shift at a hospital and I was always around licensed morticians who owned their own funeral homes," she said. "I was always embalming, all through my 20s and 30s."

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In 2013, Malone-Williams opened her modest business, Shannon and Malone Chapel of Peace at 9035 Wadsworth Parkway with a mission to provide affordable funeral services to people of every culture and religious tradition.

As her business grows, Malone-Williams wants to take on her own apprentices in Colorado to spread a culture of educated, professional morticians, despite the loose licensing regulations.

"I want to eventually be a place where people can come and train and learn and go back out," she said. "My new calling is to make sure they're the best at what they do, that they don't harm the public and that they're equipped to work."

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